


Paix

by Social_Cocoon



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:15:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Social_Cocoon/pseuds/Social_Cocoon
Summary: Widowmaker was a killer.Amelie was something else.





	Paix

_Cauchemar._

Widowmaker stared at the large, bold lettering. Her arm was outstretched, hand reaching lazily for the ceiling. When she turned it, the rest of the tattoo was revealed.

_Araignée du soir,_ it said on the outside of her forearm, lines stretching between the bold letters like threads of a spider’s web, or cracks in glass. On the inside was the word _cauchemar_.

_Evening spider, nightmare_.

To everyone, the tattoo was just another part of the gimmick: a killer spider. It was in her name, her visor, even the way she sometimes spoke. She’d gone so far as to get tattoos, the other being a black widow on her back. All part of the gimmick.

It was more than that, of course. It was no coincidence, nor just the artist’s good sense of tattoo placement, that the word _nightmare_ was written on the inside of her arm so that she would almost always be able to see it. It was no coincidence that the letters were so large. She had not gotten the tattoo on a whim.

It should also be noted that Widowmaker had not gotten the tattoo; Amelie had.

In the weeks leading up to getting the tattoo, Amelie had slowly been waking up from the conditioning that had turned her into Talon’s perfect assassin. There were moments when she was aware, but unable to control herself. Then sometimes there were moments when she’d snap into herself and to others she acted as if she’d just woken up from a dream – but it only lasted a moment before Widowmaker ripped control away from her. Widowmaker was always quick to squash Amelie whenever she made too much progress. So, Amelie fought to whittle down Widowmaker’s resolve until she could gain control of herself again. It worked.

The first thing Amelie did was run to a tattoo parlor. She’d meant to leave a message, and she knew that this simple action of independence would alert Talon. When she returned to the base, they would take her in for testing and shove Amelie back under again, thinking, perhaps, for good. So she left a message for herself to bring her back, one so big that Talon couldn’t be bothered to try and remove it, and so gimmicky that they would at least be amused enough to let her keep it anyway. Even if she couldn’t bring herself back this time…she’d hoped it would do something for Widowmaker. Trigger…something. Something good. So she left that message, that trigger.

_Cauchemar,_ because this was a nightmare.

_She_ was a nightmare.

Widowmaker trailed the letters with her fingers, trying to remember the feeling of the needle buzzing over her skin. Only a dull itch came up; she could not remember the pain. She did not even think she’d felt it.

It had been a long time since then. She did not know how long, but in that time…the message worked, in a way. Not instantly, but in weeks, months, so on. Slowly Widowmaker became…not like herself, but more herself than she’d ever felt. It was not an easy thing to explain (not that she would, or could. Talon would throw her right back into the tube), nor an easy thing to understand herself.

Part of her was glad for the tattoo. Now she felt human sometimes, not like a robot. She was aware instead of walking through a dream. She could do things for herself rather than waiting for Talon to order her to do something so little as eat and sleep. At the same time, she resented it. She was the nightmare. It did not bother her usually, but when she looked at the tattoo, little fragments of Amelie came back up, including her remorse and agony over every single kill. For her part, Widowmaker took pride in her kills. A sick sort of pride, but pride nonetheless. Though, it was forced pride, originally meant to drown out Amelie. In fact, she wouldn’t have been able to know any pride had she not forced herself to. She wasn’t even sure what she felt was true pride or some distorted version of it.

…She was tired of it. Perhaps it was part of Amelie that had bubbled its way back to the surface, but she did not _want_ to always kill. She did not want to be sent out like an obedient dog day in and day out. She did not want her purpose to be to kill and only to kill. It was suffocating. But of course, that was what she’d been made for. That was why Talon had stolen Amelie from her home and turned her into someone unrecognizable. Nothing more, nothing less.

She was a woman in someone else’s stolen body, neither her nor Amelie having wanted this. She was both Amelie and not, someone who killed without feeling but once she was alone felt too much, someone with memories that were her own but felt like they belonged to a stranger. Every day her mind was in turmoil. Small some days, yes, but it was still constantly there, and the more she killed the worse it became.

When she’d killed Tekhartha Mondatta and seen the aftermath…she did not remember it very well, but it had been awful.

She did not want to kill anymore, at least not under the command of someone else. She did not want to be in this nightmare anymore. She did not want anything to do with Talon anymore. She was made a bitch to heel and attack whenever her masters so wished it, and she did not want it. But it was the only thing Widowmaker knew, and it was the only thing she could do.

But Amelie? Amelie could do something else.

Widowmaker sat up, finally dropping her arm. If the blood rushed, she could not feel it. She rose from the bed, long black hair spilling around her shoulders, and paced the room until she found the spot that gave her enough space. Then she began stretching.

Widowmaker had been built to kill. Her talent was not natural, something she sometimes lamented in quiet moments. It would have been nice, after all, to have built up her skill and go through the frustration that came with mistakes and pride that came with perfect shots. Amelie had learned a bit of shooting before, yes, but only small guns, things that were easy to conceal. She was decent enough to keep herself alive. When she’d met her husband she learned a little about rifles, but didn’t have enough time nor interest to hone those skills. She had something else to practice day in and day out, after all.

With both hands, Widowmaker reached up to the ceiling. She pushed her hips forward.

Amelie had a natural talent. That is, she hadn’t been built and modified for it, not like Widowmaker who had been –

The memory of the needles piercing her skin made her lose balance. With a huff, she straightened herself and restarted.

Her blood felt itchy.

No, Amelie had not been injected with serums and things that would make her absolutely perfect, but she also hadn’t been born with her talent. She’d been taught the basics and mastered those, then struggled through more advanced things until she’d mastered those. When she was eight, Amelie used to hate a little girl named Melanie Duval who had that inborn talent and always flaunted it.

Widowmaker lowered herself to the ground and spread her legs into an easy split. Flexibility was not something Amelie had ever struggled with.

Amelie dedicated her life to years of training. She had suffered through bruised feet, sprained ankles, and torn muscles to do something that she loved deeply, and worked as hard as she could to be able to share her passion with the world. She spent long nights practicing moves over and over again until she could do them in her sleep and the mere mention of them either made her groan in horror of confidently puff out her chest.

Enough stretching.

Widowmaker stood up, positioned herself, took a slow breath, and began to dance.

Amelie had been France’s top ballerina, and she had loved every moment she spent dancing. She had even loved the injuries which she viewed as valuable lessons. She was a dancer through and through. Widowmaker…she did not feel that same love for dance. That had been taken with everything else that made Amelie, Amelie. But, she did not even love killing, and that was what defined her. She did not love…and for that, she envied Amelie, as much as someone who could hardly feel could.

Though she was not a dancer at heart and she did not love dancing, she still did it. Whenever she was alone, she stretched and she danced. Her mind did not remember the routines very well, but that hardly mattered. Her body remembered. That was all that was needed. Her body remembered the various moves, simple and complex, and it remembered which ones had been strung together in different performances, and it remembered how to move a leg and an arm so gracefully that she seemed to flow like silk. She did not need the memories. She wanted them, but did not need them. These private, quiet little performances were just enough.

It was such a huge difference from being an assassin, and at the same time not at all. Her movements were careful and deliberate, she kept strict control over her breathing, and she aimed for nothing but perfection. In slip-ups she improvised until she was firmly back on track. As the climax approached, she blocked out all noise, focused solely on the perfect timing, the perfect movement, the perfect pull –

Widowmaker spun to a stop, reaching to end of her show. She stood panting, arms held open to the room, drops of sweat rolling down her face. Her heart pounded hard against her ribs. She could hear it clearly.

Once it was over, she felt so alive.

In that, they were the same.

But, with a gun in her hands, she was…

_Nightmare_ said her outstretched arm, the arm of another woman, the arm of a dancer. The arm of someone who cried in agony over her sad, sad fate.

She could hear it.

She began to dance again.

Widowmaker was not a dancer. That was not her purpose, but when she danced…

Widowmaker was at peace. Amelie was at peace. She was at peace.

And so she danced.


End file.
